Networked computers are used to transmit and fetch information to and from local sources (e.g., computers used in a business) and remote sources (e.g., enterprise services offered over the Internet). One exemplary network computer is a network appliance that is placed on a customer network to monitor devices of the customer network. While performing its intended operations, the network appliance can communicate with different components of a service provider's system. These components may include, for example, a web server providing user interfaces (UIs) to the customer network's IT administrator and other users, a backend server receiving monitoring data from the network appliance and generating alerts and various reports, a database server storing monitoring data in a database, etc.
A network appliance can operate in the production environment by default. However, the service provider usually develops and deploys its services in many other environments. For example, the service provider may develop its services in the development environment, test its services in the quality assurance (QA) environment, and deploy its services in the staging environment or the production environment. When the network appliance designated to operate in the production environment by default is used in a different environment, the network appliance needs to be manually switched to the different environment. As with any manual operation, the above switching of the network appliance is prone to human errors, is inefficient, and creates inconvenience for users.